also "Altered Era [+new sprites]" is discussed in this thread, which is The_Gnat's effort to provide unique sprites for "more of the same" advancements in Altered era/ruleset (for two races/factions so far), including "more of the same" advancements (see under first spoiler below). it is available on official add-ons server for BfW 1.12.x

feedback is welcome!
under the spoiler are some questions if you want your feedback to be more structured:

Spoiler:

1. how do you prefer to play?
on which maps or random map generators?
what size of map do you prefer and with how many human and AI opponents?
2. what you liked most and why?
3. what confused you or seems unclear?
4. what annoyed or frustrated you?
5. what seems missing or would be nice to have?

please feel free to send your feedback in private message if you do not feel like going public )

and here are some details about it:

this era is an attempt to redesign, rebalance and re-flavor BfW's multiplayer factions according to author's taste (only five races/factions are "altered" so far).

it also adds some custom rules to make late games on big maps more challenging for winning player (especially when playing against AI) and "tie loose ends" like using recall menu for resurrecting dead units. full list of these rules can be accessed in game from right-click menu ("Info about Units Rules" and "Info about Misc Rules" entries), these rules are listed under spoiler below:

Spoiler:

(most of these rules can be turned off by commenting corresponding includes in _main.cfg file, grouped after "require_era=yes" line)

unit-related:ad-hoc recruiting</span>: leaders can recruit units in windmills and owned villages when they stand next to them, cost is usually 2 gold higher (compared to recruiting in the keep) for units that advance to other level 1 units and 1.5x higher for other units, activated from right-click menu on windmill/village hexesdismissing: unit can be dismissed (moved to recall list) if it did not act during current turn, was not attacked since its previous turn, was not recruited or recalled during current turn and stands on a terrain it can pass using only one movement point, dismissed unit's side gets gold equal to 1/3 of dismissed unit's current experience, activated from right-click menurebirth: all killed units are moved to their owners' recall listspenalized recalling: unit recalling cost equals to half of the unit's maximum experience (rounded down), recalled unit loses half its current experience and is left with only 10 hitpointsno healing on advancement: unit after advancement has same amount of hitpoints as before advancement, unless explicitly modified by other circumstanceshealing hamlets: units that start their turn on hamlets (flowering water lilies, great tree, oasis, mountain watchtower) are healed for {HEALING_IN_HEALING_LOCATIONS_HEALING_AMOUNT} hitpoints or have their poison slowed, this effect is not cumulative with healing and regrowth abilities of units

advancements-related:Hero / Legend: all units except 'commoners' have default advancement paths that look and work in exactly same way as their base unit type except they are of higher level and correspondingly more powerful (more damage and hitpoints), they have type names of their base unit types with 'Hero' (level 2) and 'Legend' (level 3) suffixes appendedhealing instead of advancement: unit can heal itself for 10 hitpoints instead of advancement, this option costs from 15 to 50 experience points depending on unit type, experience points in excess of this amount are preservedrejuvenation (AMLA): level 3 units can increase their hitpoints maximum by 5% and experience points by 10% 'instead' of advancement (which is not available for them)

economy-related:trade nexus: when side's leader is at least 25 hexes away from map's horizontal or vertical edges then each turn this side receives 1 gold per dimension, and 1 more gold per dimension if distance is at least 40 hexesdesperate stand: if sum of side's gold (treated as 0 if negative) and 25 times quantity of side's units is less than sum of map's height and width then this side receives amount of gold equal to sum of map's height and width when its turn beginsbenevolent lend: if side is in debt (its gold reserves are negative) then its debt is reduced by half when this side's turn startsstorage expenses: if side has more than 250 gold then its gold in excess of this amount is reduced by half when this side's turn startscorruption: if player owns more than 25 villages then excess villages provide 1/2 gold less income unless their income is required to pay the debt

AI-only:ancestral memory (for AI): random unit of each computer player gets experience boost proportional to current turn number, initially capped at 15 and increasing with each leader killedinvasion support (for AI): each computer-controlled side at the beginning of its turn receives extra gold equal to turn number or 'support ceiling', whichever is lower, 'support ceiling' starts at 5 and increases by a number of dead leaders whenever leader dies

auto-generated unit advancement trees: https://units.wesnoth.org/1.14/Altered/en_US/AF.html
there are some "commoners" - level 0 units that have most qualities of level 1 units, except they are weaker, fighting them gives experience to their opponent only if this opponent will not advance/level-up as a result and only 4 exp is given for killing them.
also some units are shown more than once because there is more than one unit type able to advance to them, for example both fey preserver and fey wanderer ("commoners" of fey faction) can advance to archer, so archer subtree is shown twice, once for each "commoner"

there are a bunch of other "design guidelines" that I strive to follow when making content for Altered era/ruleset, see them under the spoiler:

Spoiler:

All units in "altered" factions have melee and ranged attacks, melee-inclined units have very weak ranged attacks (so that there are no 'free', zero-risk attacks against melee units) and no level 0 units (no zero-upkeep crowds for bankers)

"more of the same" advancements have same looks as their direct predecessors, so change in unit's appearance also (hopefully) leads to change in its use, even if only a minor one, added a bunch of weapon specials that change attack/defense/damage in different circumstances for extra variety, especially among non-magical units. also some level 1 units ("commoners") are intended to be essentially "level 0 units with non-zero upkeep and zone of control"

some stats of units are derived from their looks:
- units with twin (two swords, two axes, etc) or two-sided (pole) weapons get "circular" attack special (additional chances to hit if some of their regular strikes miss)
- units with shields get "shield" attack special (defense bonus when attacking) for attacks which feature shield in their animations.
- units with clothes/armor get minor resistances depending on what they wear as follows:
leather armor - 20% resistance to impact and fire damage
chain mail - 20% resistance to impact and blade damage
plate armor - 20% resistance to pierce and blade damage
warm clothes - 20% resistance to cold damage
some deeply magical creatures (faeries etc, not spellcasters of "mundane" races) get 20% resistance to arcane damage

random traits are changed to make most of them scale with unit's power (for damage bonuses) and have no downsides (for movement bonus), "intelligent" trait is removed (except for temporarily included mainline races), added some new racial traits, full list under the spoiler:

Spoiler:

Altered Random Traits of Units have following effects:daring: no damage penalty for unfavorable time of day, for neutral units +25% damage during dawn and duskmighty: +15% melee damage (minimum +1 damage)agile: +15% ranged damage (minimum +1 damage)fast: +1 movement speedelusive: ignores all zones of control (move freely when near opponents) as long as there are no more than one adjacent opponenttough: +15% hitpointsrobust: always rest-heals unless attacked, heals 10 hitpoints and cured from debilitating conditions when advances

Altered Fixed (non-randomized) Traits of Units have following effects:recruiter: can recruit and recall units of its own faction when on keep or near windmill or owned villagelifeless: immune to poisonspirit: inflict and receive 50% less damage unless opponent also has this trait, cannot be healed with healing abilities

balanced to roughly match default era's factions
some default era's factions are (temporarily?) included to playtest the balance

bugs and plans for the future:

Spoiler:

known bugs:
- default hotkeys for custom right-click menu entries do not work in BfW 1.10.x
- cannot get custom help topics added to BfW's help, added them to right-click menu instead
- the fact that shield attack special is negated when used against mystical attacks is not shown in combat encounter estimations window in BfW 1.10.x
- "circular" and "swarm" attack specials are not working correctly together when both of them are applied to the same attack/weapon

todo:
- add other "altered" races/factions
- add more units for existing "altered" races/factions and more attacks for existing units
- playtest everything, especially balance
- there are some more ideas for custom rules and other changes

most art assets are taken from BfW's core assets and mods/UMCs included in "Ageless Era" mod, some are altered and very few are made by author
duplicates of almost all core resources are included in this mod to reduce potential dependency on BfW's version

inspired by "Extended Factions" era

Attachments

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Last edited by lea on January 18th, 2019, 7:17 am, edited 47 times in total.

Hi Lea, this altered era sounds great, one thing i think would be cool to add also is that there are two types of villages, blacksmith shops, mines, mills, etc. that give money and normal villages that heal, rather than having villages do both

I like the idea of multiple settlement types (would go for more than two) and I think I know how to make that in WML for player-vs-player games on custom-made maps. there are two major issues with it:
1) random maps (my mode of choice so far) do not contain enough alternative settlement types to fully take on either function of villages - need to tamper with random map generator to change that
2) AI does not know how to use alternative settlement types - need to tamper with AI obviously
both of these look like major time sinks to me... so not now. but may be later, when I flesh out a few more factions

lea wrote:1) random maps (my mode of choice so far) do not contain enough alternative settlement types to fully take on either function of villages - need to tamper with random map generator to change that

Yeah i agree, (and always if you can't change the map generator you can just make events for specific terrain types to differentiate between settlements)

lea wrote:2) AI does not know how to use alternative settlement types - need to tamper with AI obviously
both of these look like major time sinks to me... so not now. but may be later, when I flesh out a few more factions

Another yeah it would be silly for ai to be sitting on a income earning settlement waiting to get healed

I'd love to hear your other ideas for settlements!

Last edited by The_Gnat on November 20th, 2016, 8:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

The_Gnat wrote:Yeah i agree, (and always if you can't change the map generator you can just make events for specific terrain types to differentiate between settlements)

current random maps have only regular villages in required quantities so without changing map generators there will be lack/overabundance of either healing sources or income sources - except in maps manually customized for this kind of settlements

The_Gnat wrote:I'd love to hear your other ideas for settlements!

these are settlements where otherwise unavailable units can be hired, like hiring animals in lairs located in their natural habitats (desert lairs for scorpions, forest lairs for wolves etc), hiring trolls on bridges (for those who like this fantasy stereotype), hiring dragons in cave lairs (if I manage to add caves to random maps) and so on

changes:
- fixed bug in circular weapon special - it was possible to make more hits than this special should allow if used defensively
- added 3 more units to elven faction
- changed elven tender melee attack from 4-4 to 4-3 (one of new units now fills "cheaper blunt melee" niche)
- fixed a few typos and bugs in animations

The_Gnat wrote:Sound good! I am interested in trying out your era when it is completed! (also is the circular weapon special going to be included in this era)

it is already included and used by 3 units (4 in 0.1.1 update).
this era is not intended to ever be "totally finished, nothing more to add", I intend to put 1.0 version number when 3 races will be "altered" so that default factions can be removed. unless I "run out of steam" before reaching this milestone
If you want to find out whether you may like this era when it will be more or less "full" then I suggest to play one game on (medium or larger) random map with "Elves" faction chosen for all players

lea wrote:it is already included and used by 3 units (4 in 0.1.1 update).
this era is not intended to ever be "totally finished, nothing more to add", I intend to put 1.0 version number when 3 races will be "altered" so that default factions can be removed. unless I "run out of steam" before reaching this milestone
If you want to find out whether you may like this era when it will be more or less "full" then I suggest to play one game on (medium or larger) random map with "Elves" faction chosen for all players

Hi i have played a random map with the altered era and i think it is really cool! I totally love the magical attack animations you have created, especially call lightning!!! Here are my thoughts:

I noticed in the rules desperate stand and i was wondering what that was for. Also i was wondering why the units have yellow arrows showing their level under them? Also i was unable to recruit onto owned villages.

Other things i noticed:

-The elven nymph has 52 xp to advance where as its counterpart the elven oracle only has 36 that seems like a big difference
-The elven wanderer and forester i did not at first realize do not advance to lvl 2 units, it would be nice if that was made clear (but even once i found out i bought a lot of them )
- I noticed that villages heal and give gold, are you planning on changing that still? Also if some villages no longer heal are you planning on adding in any healer units?

Also i loved all the new units you created but noticed a lot didn't have unique images, here are images i found that (i think ) would be better for the various units to make them each unique!

Fighter Champion: (i suggest you use the elf shielder image from the golden age - not quite the same style if you don't like it i have 3 other images that i suggest would work)

Fighter Hero: (i suggest the elvish line holder from the golden age - i have other images that would work for this unit also)

If you are interested in having this i have already found images for most of your units without unique pictures. (and if you don't have time to do this i can add them all for you!) I think that unique images are really important so it would be great if they got added!

changes:
- reduced hitpoints and max experience for most high-level units, fixed max experience for some of them (used to be same as level 2 units because of my mistake)
- added random map generators with different default settings (for tiny and large game)
- reduced ranged damage for sidne (was too high to make dancer hero worth going for)

thanks but this animation is made by someone else (don't know who exactly). I took it from ageless era (IIRC) and merely made the cloud move (it was hanging still in original version of this animation). Concord's "call hail" attack animation is closer to being "made by me", but still uses stormcloud images from "call lightning"

The_Gnat wrote:I noticed in the rules desperate stand and i was wondering what that was for.

as the name implies, it is an attempt to give losing side an ability to put up a final fight - or even recover. otherwise leaders without armies and cash can be killed by just a few level 1 units, even though I made them stronger than regular level 3 units.

The_Gnat wrote:Also i was wondering why the units have yellow arrows showing their level under them?

to indicate their level I hope it should help to distinguish "champion" and "hero" units ("more of the same" advancement paths) from their level 1 predecessors - they use same looks and animations so without additional signs players would have to hover the mouse cursor over them just to know if each such unit is basic level 1 unit or advanced version of the same basic type. for that same reason leaders are marked with red "flash" over their level indicators.

The_Gnat wrote:Also i was unable to recruit onto owned villages.

did you see "Recruit in Village" option in right-click menu? I'll check if I made some typo in definition of this ability

The_Gnat wrote:-The elven nymph has 52 xp to advance where as its counterpart the elven oracle only has 36 that seems like a big difference

it is 120 and 90 respectively in version 0.1.2 - still fairly big difference but I think it is justified by heal/regenerate abilities of the nymph and the fact that all oracle's attacks (except humble staff) cannot kill (have "nonlethal" special) so oracle should be harder to level up

The_Gnat wrote:-The elven wanderer and forester i did not at first realize do not advance to lvl 2 units, it would be nice if that was made clear

they are intended to be kind of level 0 units, but with non-zero upkeep and zone of control. I expected that it will be confusing (also they do not show up in advancement trees in https://units.wesnoth.org/1.12/Altered/ ... html#Elves) but failed to come up with a way to make it more clear any ideas?

The_Gnat wrote:(but even once i found out i bought a lot of them )

do you think they are too strong/useful for their price?

The_Gnat wrote:- I noticed that villages heal and give gold, are you planning on changing that still? Also if some villages no longer heal are you planning on adding in any healer units?

yes, villages work in the same way as in default ruleset. I intend to get at least 3 factions/races to playable state and only then elaborate on custom rules. also want to tamper with random map generator to add caves and a few other things.

The_Gnat wrote:Also i loved all the new units you created but noticed a lot didn't have unique images, here are images i found that (i think ) would be better for the various units to make them each unique!

my primary goal is to add variety in game mechanics and "backstory" (unit descriptions), not in graphics. But suggestions for images are welcome because after getting 3 factions up to playable state I will likely want to add more units to them and for elves I already ran out of default images also some existing units may get additional attacks

The_Gnat wrote:If you are interested in having this i have already found images for most of your units without unique pictures. (and if you don't have time to do this i can add them all for you!) I think that unique images are really important so it would be great if they got added!

I suggest you add/replace them yourself and post it on BfW's addons server as your variation of my era (feel free to use similar name with some suffix for it so that it will be near my era in addons list when sorted alphabetically). Two more factions are going to take plenty of my time and only after making them I am going to get to polishing things. if I will live long enough

changes:
- fixed ad-hoc recruitment in villages and windmills not working in most setups
- added explanation for "commoner" units to "info about rules" right-click menu option. these are level 1 units that are intended to be "level 0 units with non-zero upkeep and zone of control"
- added traveler to ad-hoc recruit list and increased its price (used to be same as tender's price despite stronger attacks)

The_Gnat wrote:Also i was wondering why the units have yellow arrows showing their level under them?

to indicate their level I hope it should help to distinguish "champion" and "hero" units ("more of the same" advancement paths) from their level 1 predecessors - they use same looks and animations so without additional signs players would have to hover the mouse cursor over them just to know if each such unit is basic level 1 unit or advanced version of the same basic type. for that same reason leaders are marked with red "flash" over their level indicators.

Hmm... its a good idea but the arrows seem a little bit too obtrusive on the wesnoth sprites and scenery (maybe if you shrink them a little it would be better)

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:Also i was unable to recruit onto owned villages.

did you see "Recruit in Village" option in right-click menu? I'll check if I made some typo in definition of this ability

Glad you fixed it, this is a good feature!

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:-The elven nymph has 52 xp to advance where as its counterpart the elven oracle only has 36 that seems like a big difference

it is 120 and 90 respectively in version 0.1.2 - still fairly big difference but I think it is justified by heal/regenerate abilities of the nymph and the fact that all oracle's attacks (except humble staff) cannot kill (have "nonlethal" special) so oracle should be harder to level up

Yeah i see what you mean, nonlethal is a big disadvantage, so this is good.

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:-The elven wanderer and forester i did not at first realize do not advance to lvl 2 units, it would be nice if that was made clear

they are intended to be kind of level 0 units, but with non-zero upkeep and zone of control. I expected that it will be confusing (also they do not show up in advancement trees in https://units.wesnoth.org/1.12/Altered/ ... #Elves&#41; but failed to come up with a way to make it more clear any ideas?

Its good it is added to the rules, that way no one else makes my mistake

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:(but even once i found out i bought a lot of them )

do you think they are too strong/useful for their price?

This is hard to say, maybe increase the price by 1gp, i would really have to play more to tell you for sure.

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:- I noticed that villages heal and give gold, are you planning on changing that still? Also if some villages no longer heal are you planning on adding in any healer units?

yes, villages work in the same way as in default ruleset. I intend to get at least 3 factions/races to playable state and only then elaborate on custom rules. also want to tamper with random map generator to add caves and a few other things.

Yeah that is a good idea!

Spoiler:

lea wrote:

The_Gnat wrote:Also i loved all the new units you created but noticed a lot didn't have unique images, here are images i found that (i think ) would be better for the various units to make them each unique!

my primary goal is to add variety in game mechanics and "backstory" (unit descriptions), not in graphics. But suggestions for images are welcome because after getting 3 factions up to
playable state I will likely want to add more units to them and for elves I already ran out of default images also some existing units may get additional attacks

The_Gnat wrote:If you are interested in having this i have already found images for most of your units without unique pictures. (and if you don't have time to do this i can add them all for you!) I think that unique images are really important so it would be great if they got added!

I suggest you add/replace them yourself and post it on BfW's addons server as your variation of my era (feel free to use similar name with some suffix for it so that it will be near my era in addons list when sorted alphabetically). Two more factions are going to take plenty of my time and only after making them I am going to get to polishing things. if I will live long enough

Thanks a lot, i will have a look around over the next few weeks and see if i can get sprites unique sprites for all the units!

Great Era i look forward to the new factions!

Also in the multiplayer window the altered era just says "altered", all the rest say "XXXX era" so maybe you should make it say "altered era" (this is not really important just a thought i had), and there is no description for the altered era in the multiplayer menu.